Stephen King's THE MIST is heading to TV

Under the Dome might just have been cancelled after recently completing its third season, but fear not Stephen King fans as another of the prolific horror authors’ works (via Deadline) is heading to the small screen – this time it’s ‘The Mist’.

Originally published as part of the 1980’s anthology ‘Dark Forces’, and later again in a slightly edited form in 1985’s ‘Skeleton Crew’, the story revolves around a small town in Maine (as always) that is blanketed by a mysterious mist following a violent thunderstorm – dangerous creatures, possibly manifested by people’s fears, attack those venturing outdoors into the mist. A group of locals are trapped in a supermarket and fight to survive the supernatural event, and each other.

‘The Mist’ was already the subject of a 2007 feature film adaption of the same name by Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead) and starred Thomas Jane (the best Punisher). However its basic concept is a very good fit for the small screen as well as there’s ample room for monsters-of-the-week, its conspiracies, and human drama. The Weinstein brothers, through their Dimension Television label, will bring the project to life.

The show will be penned by Christian Torpe, creator of the highly-regarded Danish comedy-drama series Rita, with Stephen King’s blessing. This’ll mark Torpe’s first major English-language project and it could be interesting to see because while many Scandinavian TV series have been remade over the last few years (the likes of The Killing, The Bridge and Real Humans among others) they’ve tended to lose some of their edge when translated by traditional Hollywood writers – maybe if you’re used to living without sunlight for months at a time you’re not afraid to go darker; and when it comes to horror, especially the often-weird Stephen King kind, you need that edge to be interesting.

It’s something I’m keen to see, and hopefully my optimism isn’t misplaced because many Stephen King adaptions – like the previously mentioned Under the DumbDom Dome – are more miss than hit because they seem to lose a lot when translated from the page to the screen; and I’d like to see one that doesn’t pull any punches. What do you think?

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